Research investigating coarticulatory patterns in dysarthria has the potential to provide insight regarding deficits in the organizational coherence of phonetic events that may underlie deviant perceptual characteristics. The current study investigated anticipatory coarticulation for 17 speakers with multiple sclerosis (MS), 12 speakers with Parkinson's disease (PD), and 29 healthy control speakers. V1-C-V2 sequences were used to investigate intersyllabic vowel to vowel effects (V2 to V1 effects), intersyllabic consonant to vowel effects (C to V1 effects), and intrasyllabic vowel to consonant effects (V2 to C effects). Second formant frequencies and first moment coefficients were used to infer coarticulation. In general, patterns of intersyllabic and intrasyllabic coarticulation were similar for speakers with MS, speakers with PD, and healthy control speakers. It therefore appears unlikely that coarticulatory patterns for speakers diagnosed with MS or PD strongly contribute to deviant perceptual characteristics, at least for the current group of speakers, most of whom were mildly to moderately impaired. Anticipatory vowel effects in /k/+vowel sequences, however, tended to be reduced for speakers with MS and speakers with PD when data for these 2 speaker groups were pooled and compared to control speakers. These results were not attributable to group differences in speech rate or articulatory scaling, defined as the extent of articulatory movements, and further suggest that coarticulatory deficits are not unique to particular neurological diagnoses or dysarthrias. Potential explanations for the /k/+vowel results include difficulties with anterior posterior tongue positioning and the competing influences of minimizing articulatory effort and maintaining sufficient perceptual contrast. Despite this subtle difference in coarticulation between disordered speakers and healthy control speakers, the overall results suggest that anticipatory coarticulation for speakers...

In 1868 the German Leopold Ordenstein (1835â€“1902) published in Paris a doctoral thesis in French language under the patronage of Jean-Martin Charcot (1825â€“1893). For the first time, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease were clearly recognized as different clinical entities,...

Canadian researchers analysed three clusters of Parkinson's disease cases and found that the probability of cases occurring randomly in each cluster was very low. They suggested that environmental factors, such as viral infection or toxins, could be involved.

We report a patient with young onset Parkinsonâ€™s disease (PD) and a heterozygous point mutation in parkin (c.1000C>T; p.Arg334Cys). After 8 years he developed pyramidal signs and reinvestigation demonstrated MRI and laboratory findings supportive of a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS)...

In Guadeloupe, there is an abnormally high frequency of atypical parkinsonism. Only one-third of the patients that develop parkinsonian symptoms were reported to present the classical features of idiopathic Parkinson disease and one-third a syndrome resembling progressive supranuclear palsy...

The article discusses Parkinson's disease, which is a degenerative neurological disease that affects 120,000 individuals in Great Britain aged 55-60 years old. Unilateral resting tremors, slowness and poor balance are among the symptoms of Parkinson's disease and its diagnosis is usually based...

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a positive L-dopa response in vascular parkinsonism (VP) is correlated with the presence of nigrostriatal pathology due to either vascular damage or neuronal cell loss. METHODS: Seventeen patients with pathologically confirmed VP were selected from the...

The article presents views and insights of the author concerning the timing in the initiation of treatment in Parkinson's disease (PD). Clinical, imaging and pathological studies suggest that the cell loss begins 7 to 10 years before the onset of clinical features sufficient to allow the...